Why I call it Zero-Tolerance Stupidity:The family of a second-grade boy suspended from his school in
Maryland’s Anne Arundel County for chewing his Pop-Tart-like pastry into
the shape of a gun has lost a bid to have the episode expunged from the
child’s record, according to the family’s attorney.

Emily Miller and Judicial Watch are after the reasons why Dick Gregory wasn't treated like any other citizen.
And the OAG and MPD really aren't happy about it.
Tough shit, folks.

Friday, May 17, 2013

I broke down and bought one that'll fit in a pocket and be handy. Which, about an hour ago, allowed me to see this on the back of a car and share it with you:

I doubt they see any problem with all the 'coexist' and 'be inclusive' stickers right next to the 'get rid of Fox' one.

Todd Kincannon is a violent asshole. So is RT@Amendment 28th.
And this clown is- well, a clown.
Update: received this from Bob: That is not the real Todd Kincannon, but one of the many people on
Twitter who hate him and stalk him. Todd's real Twitter handle is
@ToddKincannon. He's a lawyer and GOP operative based out of Columbia,
SC. He's well worth following on Twitter, although he's not the least
bit politically correct.

Damn right they did

And, again, do not forget that Timmy Tax-Cheat Geithner was in charge of the IRS when this all started.

Steven Miller, Obama's IRS hit man, knows how to stick to a lie.
Not that it'll do him much good. Assuming any of the Congresscritters actually care enough about this crap to really go after it. And him.
Though some do seem willing.

Pentagon furious w/Russia over new
arms shipments to Syria. State Dept: We don't know anything about it.
Russia: We've made no secret of it.
— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 17, 2013

On a personal note, spent the last couple of days getting reacquainted with posthole diggers.
I really need to swear off that crap.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

And I guarantee that somewhere in there law enforcement and military will be exempt.

Can you scream "BULLSHIT!"?Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee he recused himself from the leak investigation involving sweeping surveillance of the Associated Press because he was a “fact witness,” meaning he had access to the classified data at issue and was questioned about it. But he can’t recall when he recused himself. And it wasn’t in writing. In one of the worst security leaks of which he is aware (he says), he never told the White House (he says) that he took himself out of the loop.
I knew you could.

I have to say, while I generally disapprove of such things, I do sympathize.

The Wall Street Journal set the record straight:
"The IRS is many things, but 'independent' isn't one of them. It is
formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed by the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President. The
Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting through the Treasury Secretary."
Hmmm, and as I recall the TS was Little Timmy 'It Was All Turbotax's Fault' Geithner, wasn't he?

And now, having spent the day- among other things- digging six two-foot-deep postholes in somwhat damp clay soil and setting posts, I am now going to go collapse.

More on the IRS acting as thugs for Obama and the Democrats:The director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which oversees the determinatons of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official who apologized for targeting
conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny is married to an
attorney whose firm hosted a voter registration organizing event for the
2012 Obama re-election campaign, praised President Obama’s policy work,
and had one of its partners appointed by Obama to a key ambassadorship.

Over in Missouri, looks like they're really pissed both at what happened, and at agencies saying "We don't want to tell you anything."Last week, two actions have occurred to try and get the full truth out
of the Department of Revenue. First, in a lawsuit filed in Stoddard
County regarding the scandal, subpoenas have been issued to Governor Jay
Nixon and senior officials at the Department of Revenue to compel their
testimony. Second, the Senate took sweeping action by defunding several
divisions of the Department of Revenue that are directly connected to
the source document scanning program. In total, the Senate’s actions
would strip more than $40 million out of the Department’s budget,
directed mostly at the divisions responsible for driver licensing. The
Senate has made it clear that these appropriations will not be restored
until the Department comes clean about everything regarding this
scandal.

I tried out the homebrew CLP. Despite what you might think, the smell is very faint. And not objectionable. Only did minor cleaning/lubing, but it did a very nice job of wiping out bores. More to follow.

my ass:Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking
tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the
branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents
obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS official: "Oh no, I didn't lie to Congress, I just didn't tell them about some things. Even when they asked."

And the EPA playing more games.Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental
Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived
for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of
requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed
by the Conservative Enterprise Institute.

Daughter once referred to a good moving as 'somehow having made it through the Disney crap machine'; this kind of garbage is a fine illustration. "Hey, this character's really popular! So let's change it!"

That homemade CLP formula at PDB mentioned the other day? Dug around, and after getting a bottle of Mobil 1 and the STP, had enough stuff to make a 1/4 batch; that'll be PLENTY to try it out. In fact, I've got some stuff that needs cleaning. After I till the garden and get the truck cleaned out.

Monday, May 13, 2013

I'd always thought it would work for the purpose, but I'd never actually tried it. So...

Happily, I had a piece of 1/4" out in the garage. This stuff IS hardened, so cutting it with a hacksaw will require heating the area for the cut up to a dull red(easiest seen in deep shade or a dark area) and letting it cool. I cut a piece, then shaped and heat-treated it same as the rock drill. Just tapped it on a couple of things, and it seems to work well. Might need to be tempered a bit harder(yellow to light bronze) to last as well, far as staying sharp, but will have to experiment to find that out.

This stuff can be found at hobby shops, and a lot of hardware stores; I seem to remember it comes in sizes above 1/4", though not bigger than 3/8" at most.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

"I'm not good at math." You're not very good with the truth, either.A federal watchdog’s upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue
Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011....Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS’
Rulings and Agreements office “held a meeting with chief counsel so that
everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”
'Mistake by low-level employees' my ass.

Got stuck behind a car yesterday which had a half-dozen stickers on the back; the usual 'coexist' and 'Obama' and 'Democrats care', being driven-not very well- by an idiot who was using an electric toothbrush...

NOTE: If you want to make these, please remember that this method involves cutting tools, power tools, and torches, and if you don't pay attention to what you're doing you WILL GET HURT. And if you do, it's your own damn fault so don't yell at me.

First, the terms: most of you know a center punch: a relatively blunt point, used to make a deep punch mark, good for starting a drill bit without it walking away from the spot.

A prick punch has a much slimmer, finer point. Easy to move along a scribed or marked line and put in the exact spot you want the hole. But unlike the center punch, you only use a light tap on this one; its job is to mark the spot precisely, then you use the center punch to deepen the mark.

This is a stone drill, the kind you hit with a hammer, and it makes a 5/16” hole.

Good steel, excellent for the purposes. A lot of these, the shank either isn’t hardened or is to a much lower degree than the cutting end; for that matter I’ve seen some where the cutting end wasn’t very hard. Either case, you can usually cut the piece with a hacksaw. In this case, it gives two pieces five inches long*.

If the whole thing is hardened, mark the spots where you want to cut and use the torch to heat them up to a low red, then let it cool; that should normalize those areas enough to let the saw cut.

For punches, here’s the two tools that do most of the work for me: drill or driver, and the belt/disc sander.

Chuck one of the pieces into the drill, and start grinding. First thing I do is bevel the striking end so it’s smooth and has no corners.
Second, turn it around in the drill and use a low angle to taper the other end.
Third, form the point.
Yes, it’ll get hot on that end, hot enough to soften it. Since you're going to have to heat-treat it, not a problem.***

They’ll work as-is, but they'll dull the first time you use them; much better to heat-treat them, and on small stock like this a cup of water and a propane torch will do. For heavier stock you’ll need something a bit hotter(and something with more volume for the coolant), as you need to get the point section up to at least a low-red heat, ideal is a medium- or cherry-red. Do NOT try to get the thing as hot as possible, you’ll damage the structure and ruin that section(yes, you can anneal it and start over, but let's keep this simple).

Short digression: steel has a grain structure, and the finer you keep it the better. The first stage of heat-treating is hardening: get the piece, or- as in this case- the section of it you need to harden- up to critical temperature** and then quench it, cool it very fast. Get the steel another 50 to 100F above critical and the grain structure starts to enlarge, and the hotter it gets the worse; if you harden it then it'll look fine, but it'll have a coarse structure that's weak. Much more prone to chipping or breaking.
This stuff isn’t a air-hardening steel, which hardens just from being brought up to heat and then letting it cool in air; it has to be quenched in water(preferably hot to reduce the amount of shock to the steel) or oil(also better heated; not only to reduce shock but to make it flow better for a more even quench. Not too critical on a piece like this, very critical on a blade of any sort). Most of the stuff I’ve worked with, critical temp is 1500F, plus or minus 50; that medium or cherry-red is it, and you can learn to see it; or can use a Tempilstik, or a thermometer like this, to check it.

In this case water will do nicely, so get a cup ready. All you need or want to heat here is the area up to about a half-inch from the point; that’s the part that has to be hard, and this leaves a softer shank to absorb shock and for the hammer to strike. Find a shady spot so you can see the color and start heating the end,

turning it to keep it even. I try to keep the tip of the flame about 1/2" back from the point; if you put it ON the point that'll heat fast, true; but I want more than just the point to be hard, so I actually get from the point about 1/4-3/8" back to the required color, and when it looks right stick it in the water. Swirl it around a bit, won’t take long for a small piece to cool.

I like to check for hardness with a fine file. Just stroke it lightly on the hardened area, and if you did it right the file will skate over without biting; if it does bite, either you didn’t have it quite hot enough or it’s not the high-carbon steel you thought(yes, I’ve had that occur; damn cheap drills or files).

Back to the grinder, this time just touch it lightly, to shine up the surface.

The second step of heat-treatment is tempering; heat the piece up again, but to a much lower temperature. Hardened high-carbon steel is highly-stressed and brittle; idea is to use sufficient heat to relieve enough of the stresses so it’s not brittle, but leave enough that it’s still hard enough not to dull when you whack it.

If need, can hold the shank with pliers, though since you’re mainly heating the sharp end I can usually just hold it by hand. Hold it point angled upward and start heating no less than an inch below the hardened area;

if you’ve got a torch with a pinpoint head you can start a bit closer, with a wide flame further back. And turn the flame down a bit; slow is good here. Keep the piece turning and watch for colors(and yes, you can hold it in the drill and spin slowly if you wish). The first you’ll see is a very faint yellow appear that should flow up toward the point; behind that it’ll darken into a dark yellow, then into a bronze. For this tool I like light-to-medium bronze as the stopping point. Once the yellow is moving up to the point you can usually remove the torch; should be hot enough in the area you heated for heat to keep flowing up the piece. And soon as the desired color reaches the point, quench it to stop the process. It should look something like this

If need, sharpen the point and test it on a piece of suitable metal. And that’s it.

If you want to practice the tempering to get used to the colors, just shine up a piece of steel, any shape, and then heat it and watch. Kind of fascinating to observe as the colors appear and march along.

And if you need a small, fine chisel, this stuff works well for that too. For a chisel you just grind the two sides flat for the main bevel.

On one this small, I prefer to grind the main bevels, then harden & temper(same as on the punches, then grind the edge bevel. Depending on exact purpose and what you expect to use it on, can use a fairly blunt edge bevel, or a very thin.

I had a third piece of stock available, so made one of each: prick punch, center punch and chisel

Closer look at the working ends

The punches are right after tempering, the chisel I shined up when ground the edge bevels.

*Nice thing about making these, you can make them as long or short as suits our purpose.
**Depending on the alloy, critical temp can vary from 1500 to over 2000F for some of the air-hardening tool steels; some of those also need a controlled-atmosphere for best results, and that can get complicated. Which is why a lot of knifemakers who work with those steels send them to a specialist for heat-treating.
***You can use this setup to resharpen a punch that's dull; since that should already be hardened, take it slow and have some water to dip it in to keep it from overheating. Which can happen a lot faster than you might think.

A federal watchdog’s upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue
Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011....Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in
the IRS’ Rulings and Agreements office “held a meeting with chief
counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the
issue.”

On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was
changed to, “political action type organizations involved in
limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of
Rights, social economic reform/movement,” the report says.
Translation: "These people are upsetting the President and a lot of other politicians, so let's go after them."

If the IRS was serious about that 'even-handed and non-biased' stuff, they'd have come down on the people involved in this like a semi rolling over an armadillo; but they didn't.

But we're supposed to trust them. Yeah, add this to our tax-cheat former Treasury Secretary and tax-cheat politicians who get special deals as to why we SHOULDN'T trust them. And why a serious housecleaning is needed.

Preferably involving something really nasty in the way of exit routes.

A new law has finally come into force giving householders the right to
‘bash a burglar’…but not if they are stealing from your garden shed....But it yesterday emerged the new rules contain a string of exemptions.For instance, in guidance sent to prosecutors, officials say that
homeowners cannot rely on the new defence if they find an intruder in
their garden, such as stealing a lawn mower or ornament.Nor will they be protected if they chase the burglar outside. The fight must take place indoors.
So the commoners can defend themselves, even with force, BUTThe guidance also says that
shopkeepers can only get away with using ‘disproportionate’ force on
robbbers if they live above their shop, and only if the two parts of the
building are connected.

Shop assistants and customers cannot get involved in the violence, unless their loved ones happen to be living in the store.

Householders
cannot use the defence if they are only trying to protect their
property, rather than trying to defend themselves or their family.
So if someone is about to cut your throat, the clerk can't legally jump in and beat him over the head with something useful because THAT is just not allowed...

Kind of disgusting, isn't it; idiotic as this is, it really IS progress over there.

E-mail me

at elmtreeforge at att point net

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. - C.S. Lewis

Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave. - Capt. Mal

A Rifleman’s Prayer:Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses. Geek with a .45

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day." Ebenezar McCoy

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” ― Rudyard Kipling

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself." Dr. M.L. King Jr.